A Passion Play
by Mad Morrigan
Summary: Set in between the GN and the movie, an oversight of Evey's is caught by Detective Finch and though Parliament is destroyed, V isn't. What's a man to do when the only thing left to live for is gone, and he's pushed into a brave new world of his creation?
1. Breath

Vfic the first: Verification

_Hi! As you might have noticed, this story isn't exactly set in either the GNverse or the Movieverse. Rather, it hangs somewhere in the limbo between the two, soaking up the best aspects of each (well, what I consider the best at any rate). I've tried to create a careful blend between both works, keeping V's romanticism from the movie as well as his rather striking insanity, Evey's ingénue characterization from the GN as well her incredible metamorphosis, and have a lot of things planned. _

_Much love to __ephemereal__, my beta!_

_

* * *

_

_I count the hours: you count the days.  
Together, we count the minutes in this Passion Play.  
Walk dusty miles. And I ride that train  
on a first class ticket, just to be with you again._

_Picking up tired feet. Back from a far horizon.  
Cleaned up and brushed down. Dressed to look the part.  
Fresh from God's garden, I bring a gift of roses:  
To stand in sweet spring water and press them to your heart._

_-Jethro Tull, "A Gift of Roses"_

_

* * *

_

"Hold it there."

There was a click from Evey's side, and the voice of Eric Finch booming from a blind spot in her mask. Finch's arrival somehow didn't surprise Evey. Then again, nothing had much surprised her since the prison ordeal and the year spent away from V, and her times in the Shadow Gallery. She slowly turned her head until she faced him – he stood before the dead V, pointing his pistol at the vivified V, and looked between them with an expression that belied confusion bordering on frustration.

The two faced off against one another in the dim light of the Underground, Evey dressed ridiculously in V's clothing which hung off of her thin frame and sagged around the tops of her boots and gloves; Finch, pointing the gun and dressed in two-day old clothes and smelling of stale tea and whiskey and something else – something earthy – she couldn't readily identify. There was a wild look in the eye of the detective, and a shake in his hand.

Finch wet his lips and took a deep breath, steadying his nerves. "Drop the flowers, Codename V, and take off your mask," he ordered.

Evey was not impressed, nor was she afraid – her imprisonment had given her that at least. Her voice was reinforced with steel bands when she responded, simply, "No."

The detective's eyes widened at her unexpected voice. Suddenly, Eric Finch looked tired and glazed, and dropped the veneer of the "bad cop". A rose fell from the overstacked bundle in Evey's arms, but she held her ground and stared at him intensely from behind the mask.

V had done the very same thing to her on so many occasions that she felt old hat at it, and it seemed to have the same effect on Finch as it always had on her. His gun shook a little more as an awkward, pregnant silence rose up between them.

"You're assisting a terrorist, Hammond. Do you know what are you doing?" he asked finally, breaking the silence and lowering his gun, though the haunted look on his face hadn't yet dissipated. "Why are you dressed like him? Why do you have his roses?"

"You wouldn't understand," Evey murmured from behind the mask. She was suddenly grateful for the gleeful facade of Guy Fawkes – she hadn't realized how tightly she'd been clutching the armful of Violet Carsons, and underneath his smiling visage she grimaced as the roses' thorns bit into her chest and little rivulets of blood ran down her torso.

Finch looked down at the body separating them, then back up at her. "That's him, then?" He prodded the dead man's side lightly with the toe of his shoe, then knelt next to him. "That's him. Codename V," he said quietly, more of a spoken thought than an actual statement. He reached a cautious hand towards the corpse's throat, slipping it just below the end of the mask to confirm his death. Evey sucked in a mouthful of air between her teeth, and was beside Finch before she quite understood what was going on, dropping the roses all over V and the stone ground and into the track below.

"Get away," she hissed, her hands upon the other man's collar, yanking up as violently as she could. "Get away, get out and leave us be!"

Finch gasped for a moment before batting the woman away and returning to the V's side, feeling once more at the dead man's collar. "_Damn it_!" he exclaimed as Evey went for him again. "Let me alone, woman! I'm not desecrating his body!"

"I won't have you prodding him so!" she snarled, missing and stumbling, then drawing up to her full height. From underneath the cloak she drew V's knives, knowing full well she had no idea how to use them and not particularly caring.

A curious expression manifested itself on Finch's face as he checked the body's vitals once more, Evey standing watch nearby. _Surely she couldn't have missed…? Surely she'd thought to take his pulse, check underneath the mask for signs of breathing? _Suddenly, he understood – the roses, the train, and her she-bear attitude all came together, all made sense. "Were the roses for him?" he asked quietly, pressing down further and feeling the warmth of his throat and the butterfly taps of the terrorist's heart.

Evey remained silent, poised, waiting for the right moment to parry his gun and chase away the interfering detective. She didn't want to kill him – she told V she'd never kill – but if she was to get V on the train and sent off in time, then she have would take the risk. Finch peered at her, then at the gun in his hand. Slowly, he placed it in front of him and pushed it. It clattered at Evey's booted feet and lay still. In return, she sheathed the knives and stepped back.

"Once more, just to be sure," he said quietly, looking up into the face of Guy Fawkes for permission. "Then you can do whatever you wish with him and we can sort this out like rational people."

"'_Bereavement in their death to feel whom we have never seen – a vital kinsmanship import our soul and theirs between..._'" Evey murmured (1). "Leave him, detective. He's asked for a Viking Funeral –"

Finch was already pressing his fingers to V's throat once more, with that peculiar, unreadable look on his face. Through her grief she registered that something had just come to light, something likely significant, but the emotional side of her brain abruptly took over and the thought was left unexplored. She leaned down and, decisively displacing Finch's hand, hooked her gloved hands underneath V's corpse and braced herself to pick him up.

She was stayed by Eric Finch's hand.

"Ha – Evey," he began quietly, eyes following V's prone form. Her given name sounded strange in Finch's voice and she ignored him as she tried to lift V and failed. "Evey, don't send him off – he's not – "

She pushed his hand aside and struggled again with V's dead weight, this time managing to heft him slightly off the ground, draped awkwardly on her left shoulder.

"He's not, er, dead that is," Finch finished lamely, watching them in horrified fascination. Evey paused for a second or two to catch her breath and shifted the 'dead' man with visible effort. He had expected something, _anything_ more than the detached response Evey gave him. Now she shuffled away slowly, and the logical side of Eric Finch cracked.

"Heavens above, woman! Are you daft?" the detective exclaimed, rising to his feet. "He's not dead! Put him on that train and he will be, though!"

Evey turned at Finch's words, stared at him from behind the mask.

"Evey, did you hear me? I said –"

"I heard you just fine," the girl said numbly. Now, his handgun and her roses and knives lay forgotten as the two figures faced one another once more, unsure of where to proceed. "What…" Evey began weakly, before clearing her throat and beginning, in a much more resolute tone, "Why are you saying this…?"

"I felt a pulse," Finch answered before she finished her thought, as he stepped forward, hooking an arm around V to ease the weight from her. Together they laid him down once more, pushing the mask away further and fumbling with the black cloth around V's neck. "There, where my fingers are. You can feel it when you press down…"

Evey reached towards the spot the detective pointed out feeling strangely dulled, her senses cut off. She pressed her leather-gloved fingers against the side of his aorta, just where Finch pointed out, and felt nothing. "_Jesu_ –" she began, biting back tears. Then, in a gesture she least expected, Finch took her hand away from the fallen V and pried the glove off. She reached for the masked man once more and then – then she felt it.

Imperceptible at first, a faint but regular thump fluttered against her index and middle fingers. She drew a deep breath – then, boldly, slipped her fingers underneath V's mask and blindly groped for his nose, ignoring the texture of his skin. Again, a sign of life – the slight tickling of exhaled breath against her fingertips. Somewhere in the back of Evey's mind, it registered just how gross an invasion of privacy she'd committed.

Then, suddenly, the dam of held tears was burst, wetting her face and the black eyeguards of the mask and running into her collar. She pulled the mask off and tossed it aside blindly. It skidded across the floor like his gun had earlier and landed a few centimeters from the edge of the platform, where it teetered precariously.

Finch stood by uncomfortably as the black-clad woman in front of him began to cry, the sobs wracking her shoulders in a most frightening way. He had seen tears like that in the past– hell, he'd shed them himself several times. The humors of bitterness and pain and fear were obvious, but these were tinged with something extra. It hit him like a brick over the head, then – Evey Hammond wasn't just his prisoner, a poor girl brought into the entire mess by the whim of fate. She was in love with him. Hopelessly, unrequitedly, in a twisted Stockholm Syndrome kind of way. No, that wasn't _quite_ it, but whatever the case, Finch could easily sum it up in less than five words:

That poor bastard.

Faintly, in the distance, bells began to ring signaling a new day, and Guy Fawkes leered up at him from the edge of the platform before slipping into the darkness below.

* * *

1) Emily Dickenson 


	2. What Dreams May Come

Hello again, all! Just wanted to give everyone who responded a big thanks, and to give mad props to my beta, ephemereal, for giving me a really wicked idea for this chapter and for the rest of this fic. Hopefully you all will appreciate it as much as we do. Timewise, chapter two takes place immediately after chapter 1 - I just didn't want to put anything about the time on top of the page.

Disclaimer: I don't own V for Vendetta, or any of the characters described within. Those belong to David Lloyd and Alan Moore, and I wish to have many, many of their children. The movieverse is also not mine.

* * *

"_Hello, this is St. Catherine's Memorial Hos – please hold – welcome to St. Ca –"_

" –_what in the – oh my swee–"_

" –_like we've got a government case… Finch, the Inspector –"_

"–_need how many pints! Fine, we need O neg –" _

"_Gotta get that mask off…"_

"…_allergic to any –" _

V awoke groggily to the sound of crying and a muffled conversation taking place between two people somewhere off in the distance. The smell of roses hung heavily in the air, mixed with something else. It was metallic, rather like the scent of old coins or tarnished silver… in his state, it took him a long while to realize that what he actually smelled was blood. Even then, it still didn't register that it was his own.

"_Who on earth are all these flowers for, miss?"_

"_Just, ah… just a friend…"_

Roses and blood. Huh. Something about that particular combination sounded oddly familiar, though V couldn't, for the life of him, remember why.

"_Hmm. What'd you say his name was again, Inspector?"_

"_Ah, yes, I'd almost forgotten. He's a John Doe we picked up…"_

Something tugged at the back of his mind just then, a fact that seemed important yet unreachable at the edges of his foggy memory. He tried to sit up, bracing his arms against the bed, but he was stopped by a searing pain that rippled through his torso and back and arms. He found himself falling backwards onto something soft and warm, pulling wires and tubing down with him. Something was terribly wrong with his perception of time – everything was lagging, and though his body seemed to be in one place, his mind was somewhere behind.

"_Finch, why did you say…?"_

"_Never you mind, Ha –"_

_Wires?_ He thought blearily. All around him there were disconcerting murmurs, and blurry shapes moving in and out of his field of vision. An antiseptic smell clung to the inside of his nose. They were binding his arms, then, though he could still move somewhat… he thought about it, but decided he was quite comfortable where he was. Except for one major thing, the sheets, which irked him by scratching at his bare back and sticking to the blood all over him.

_Wait. These sheets…these are **not** my sheets_, V noted somewhat indignantly, passing out before he could think about it more fully.

* * *

When V woke again he found that he was in the dark, though it wasn't pitch black – a small sliver of light came from the cracked door, offering tantalizing glances at the brightness beyond and voices at the other side. There seemed to be a buzzing in the air somewhere in the background, like the electronic hum of a television from many rooms away, but he couldn't concentrate enough to figure out to what it was due. 

Overall, V found himself feeling tired, vaguely numb, and without the mental capacity to concentrate on much of anything. He also found that he didn't particularly care, and instead tried to study the rest of his surroundings: the smell of roses, the notable absence of the smell of blood, and the feel of his own sheets against his bare back. He had just begun to recall that, before, the sheets had been different when the muffled conversation startled him and his thoughts scattered.

It was disturbing for V to hear people without seeing them, and his mind stretched to find an explanation for the situation – the voices seemed disembodied in the dark, like songs from an audio cassette playing in an empty room or voices on the radio. His mind, still foggy with sleep, immediately latched upon that second idea.

_A radio show? _ V wondered fuzzily, and the concept actually made him quite happy._ Ah, yes, I haven't heard one of those in years! _His mind drifted between the snippets of broadcasted conversation, picking up half-phrases and intonations and the occasional sharp word or two from the actors behind the blinding line of light behind the door.

"Yes, yes, just let it out… if that's what you need, then cry…"

These performers were especially talented, in his opinion. They were part of a dramatic scene, set starkly against silence – no, wait, the setting wasn't completely silent. Upon greater scrutiny he could hear faint background noises: the dripping of a faucet somewhere; the sound of rushing liquid, like a drink being poured, and a clunk as a glass was set down. Oh, and footsteps, heavy thuds that paced the same lines over and over again. They were headed away from him when he noticed them, to the back corner of some stone-floored room.

V strained to hear the dialogue, blocking out his other murky thoughts.

"Oh, _Jesus_, Eric, I almost –" The scene continued, a choked sob cutting off the rest of the sentence. The speaker was a young woman with a London accent, voice a little high and nearly unintelligible with grief. V sighed contentedly – such _acting_! Such marvels that a well-written script and a competent actress – even though he hadn't heard much of the script nor did this actress have a naturally mellifluous voice – could perform. He could picture her in his mind, sitting at a table, with clutching hands wound in her hair and tears streaming down her face.

He closed his eyes to block out the light, and his thoughts drifted to the source of his actress' grief. _The death of a lover, perhaps? A word of passion, nearly uttered but held back, never to be mentioned again? Ah, yes… 'I hold it true, whate'er befall; I feel it, when I sorrow most; 'Tis better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.'_ (1)

V was proud to be a romantic at heart, even in his most feverish dreams.

"Hush, now, you couldn't have known…" There, the other voice, that of reason and comfort and the source of the pacing. The actor was older, V could tell – the sound of experience was rich in his voice, a monotone masterpiece like the policemen from _Dragnet_. _Was this actor Irish?_ he wondered, noting the man's lilt.

Oddly enough, he sounded familiar, but foreign at the same time…

"But what I almost did…" the woman continued.

"The fact remains that you didn't. Calm down, please –" The actor sounded desperate, though V could tell that he was trying to hide it.

"… he would have been _on_ that train, hurtling towardsGod only _knows_…", she followed with another wail. "Oh my _Lord_…" The woman had reached the endpoint of her tears and her breath hitched and she hiccoughed, the sound intermixed with throaty sobs. Oh, she was _good_ – she actually sounded like he did once, crying and standing in the pouring rain after… after something that involved fire… _oh my,_ _what was that again?_

Time seemed to slow as V was overtaken by a sudden rush of consciousness. It's said that life flashes before one's eyes at the moment of death – V had avoided that, narrowly, but in that dark room with the voices and the smell of roses, he remembered. _Larkhill. _

_Prothero. _

_A man with dark hair and eyes, having his head shaved. _

_Surridge. _

_A line of people, arms bared, wincing as they were inoculated. Chalk X's on doors. _

_Lilliman. _

_The number 5. The good doctor, babbling about her hopes and fears. Violet Carson roses and the way he had read, long ago, how to make Gelignite out of woodpulp and fertilizer and cellulose._

_Valerie. _

_The Salt Flats. The way she had changed him, made him human, and gave him letters written on toilet paper._

_Creedy._

_Sutler. _

_Finch. _

_A little girl with glasses._

He hadn't realized he was screaming until there were hurried footsteps – a woman's, for the footfalls were lighter – running in his direction, and thought it strange that while his mind was being flooded with all of its horrible imagery, he could still wonder who on Earth was running. The sliver of light increased until he could see a woman's silhouette at the door.

"Evey!" the man on the radio scolded, voice somewhere in the light. "Evey, what's going on?"

_Evey? _

A flicker of a memory – _a waif with blonde curls and brown eyes who danced with him that fateful evening and put her hands to his mask, nearly lifting it off. Evey, his light, his complement to the darkness._

Evey_… was the girl on the radio,_ he realized just as she bent over him and pressed a smooth hand to his forehead.

V passed out again.

* * *

Something had happened to Eric Finch in the early morning hours of November fifth, and as he sat alone in the dimmed interior of the Shadow Gallery he thought about his current predicament. Twenty-seven years with the Party, two major epidemics, a car crash, a murder, and a fake identity later – and what had he to show for his hard work? He pondered the answer through the glass in front of him, filled with amber liquid and set there silently by Evey – a wordless peace offering after she had calmed V somewhat and went to sit by his side.

_Where was I? _Finch thought, snapping his mind back into reality._ Oh, yes._

Finch had a sidekick, a Robin to his Batman (and he remembered and cherished those fleeting memories of his childhood, when seemingly no one else did) – Dominic was a solid cop with a wonderful mind and a bright future, but with the discipline of a puppy. A fierce puppy, to be sure, but untrained and unthinking and overenthusiastic, having been raised with Party attitude and ethics. Dominic was probably frantic over the entire situation, he realized suddenly. Finch's phone was somewhere in the countryside, having been lost in the shuffle of his clothing during the heavier portion of his LSD experience. While he'd found the clothes, the phone had gone missing – probably some hoodlum. Finch sighed and wearily settled back onto the cushions, forcing himself to relax. Dominic would be fine without him. He'd have to be.

_Now, Eric, think. What else?_

Finch _had _routed out the terrorist, which he would have considered to be the crowning moment of his career. Unfortunately, he'd gone about it by dropping acid and wandering around the countryside like a loon in the process. How much of this night and the last was due to his hallucinations and how much to his own analytical insight? Could he really trust himself to find his way out of this hellhole, with its crazy, Rasputin-like masked inhabitant and his equally insane protégé? Oh, and even _if _he managed such a feat, could he portray accurately what exactly went on without getting black-bagged? He raised the glass and brought it to his lips thoughtfully. _Probably not_, he thought. Definitely not, after –

_Well, Creedy and Sutler **were** dead. No more black bags._

_By the way, old dog, you helped blow up Parliament._

_Oh, **Christ**. _

_Why did I do that?_ He thought, gripping the sides of the glass tightly. The edge of the tumbler was tipped, and he felt the burn of the liquor pass down throat and warm his stomach. It was a pleasant sensation, that familiar warmth, and it calmed him for a moment before he continued his silent tally of 'accomplishments'.

He had, most importantly of all, stood aside while Evey Hammond, grief-stricken, had pulled that lever. _That_ lever, which had sent off a train full of enough Gelignite to detonate small countries underneath Parliament. Twenty-seven years of loyal service, and he had blown up Parliament as repayment.

_The benefits weren't **that** bad, really…_

Finch snickered to himself at the flippant thought, well aware that its humor was probably due to the chemicals in his system. The plush surface of V's sofa was inviting, and he found himself sinking deeply into the leather and closing his eyes, willing himself to forget the last two days, trying his damnedest to block out the memories of Evey and her crying and the blatant lie he'd used to get V out of the Underground. He barely noticed the shutting of a door and Evey's soft footfalls as she padded over to the Wurlitzer and began pressing buttons.

_So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,  
blue skies from pain. Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?  
A smile from a –_

"Ugh," Evey murmured, abruptly switching songs. (2) The new tune was soft and serene to Finch's ears – background music, good for sitting on the sofa and staring into nothingness, or sinking into soft leather and plushness.

Finch chuckled from somewhere deep inside the couch. "Not in a Pink Floyd mood, then?"

"No, I suppose not." She wasn't satisfied with the new song either, and switched yet again to something he didn't recognize. A few more tunes came and went, and when Finch eventually mustered the energy to sit up, he found her standing over the jukebox's bright lights, staring into their electronic depths. Finally, after several minutes, she seemed to alight on the right tune with a soft "ah!" and there was a whirring while the machine readied itself to play.

It was a classical piece – Elgar's _Enigma Variations_, one of two pieces which had usually played on some radio station or another during Sutler and Creedy's reign (the other being, no surprise, _Land of Hope and Glory_). The thought sat rather oddly with Finch, considering how revolutionary he'd been over the last two days.

"Music?" he asked, crinkling his brow in thought as Evey tentatively sat down next to him. "I thought he was sleeping."

"He doesn't like silence," Evey responded after a long pause, looking at her hands. "He never has. There was always something going on in the background. Talking, or movies…"

"Or music?" Finch supplied, watching her closely. They were both aware of the uneasy truce between them, but somehow the silence between them was comfortable, like that of colleagues.

Evey smiled slightly. "Yes, and music. Especially music… I'm sorry, I've been terribly rude," she said abruptly, clapping her hands together briskly and rising to her feet. "Would you like something else to drink? Tea? More whiskey? If you're hungry, there's usually stuff for sandwiches–"

"No, thanks… I… eh, I should actually be getting home soon." He murmured the last bit as he stood with some effort, the exhaustion of the last two days weighing heavily upon him. "Need to return phone calls and all. Everything's in a tizzy now and I can't disappear off the radar forever."

The younger woman shrugged. "Whatever suits you best," she said nonchalantly, though the detective thought he caught undertones of _please stay, I don't want to be alone_. "I'll escort you out, then, if you'd like."

Finch pondered this, as well as her casual attitude towards him – an interloper – in V's private sanctum. "No blindfolds?"

"Not unless you want one." A brief smirk crossed Evey's lips.

Although she didn't say anything more, he knew why she was acting so blasé about their location. The thought of explaining the entire situation – the LSD, Larkhill, Victoria Station, St. Catherine's Memorial, and V – well, even the thought struck him as rather farfetched, despite him having just lived through it. He followed Evey to another room where she donned the black bob and took her mask from a peg on a mirror, looping the straps around her wrist. She inclined her head at him and he nodded, and the two began their trek out of the Shadow Gallery.

They walked in silence, abreast; the only sounds around them were their echoing footsteps on the cement and stone ground. The stones changed color as they moved further from the Shadow Gallery, from warm yellow to grey, and their surroundings became danker as the winds from above spread their rains and smog and filth to the world beneath the city. After a while Finch had lost track of the labyrinthine tunnels and twists of under-London, but as he opened his mouth to speak, they ascended a set of stairs and found themselves in a quiet alleyway.

No one had observed their coming. Finch breatheda sigh of relief; nearby, a cat eyed them warily, then resumed picking through the garbage cans that lined the side of a nearby building.

"Finch?" Eved asked suddenly, standing in the darkness between the buildings. He turned around, eyes adjusting to the luster of the streetlights and saw her there against the blackness. The stark white face of Guy Fawkes and his leer made her seem like a poltergeist in the dark, melded with the shadows – she had put on the mask sometime between ascending the stairs and dropping him off. "I just wanted to say thank you."

Her words were quiet but sincere. Finch sighed. "This isn't over, Evey. You know that, right?"

"Perhaps." He could almost detect the ghost of a smile in her words. He opened his mouth to respond, but she was already gone, back into the darkness below. The detective looked around him – at the broken glass in the streets, the alleycat chewing on a piece of garbage – and made his decision.

England may have just been set free from its bonds, but it needed a hell of a lot more than explosives and pretty words to survive. Eric Finch would be its lifeline, Evey Hammond its voice, and whether the other man wanted it or not, V was going to finish what he'd started.

* * *

(1) Alfred, Lord Tennyson, "In Memoriam A.H.H.", stanza 27. 

(2) Pink Floyd, "Wish You Were Here".


	3. Vigil

Verification (3)

A heartbeat. That was the first thing V remembered, his first flash of real consciousness.

The second was his forearm, crusted over with red and white pustules and other morbid anomalies. It didn't hurt, oddly enough – as a matter of fact, he felt vaguely numb all over except for a few patches on his face which ached indeed. He stared at the arm in morbid fascination, turning it over to examine his hands and the soft flesh of his inner wrist, and found the underside to be slightly less scarred. Further inspection showed the same red and white pattern along most of his right side, with patches of black in some of the really nasty-looking spots. His left side, though shielded somewhat from the blast, didn't escape unscathed either – he was now a patchwork of scars, weals, and mangled tissue – like an especially gruesome ragdoll.

Slowly he forced himself to sit up, and found two more surprising things: one, that he was naked (it wasn't the issue of being nude so much as the issue of being nude and _not_ being caught) and two, he still had eyelashes. How in the world did he still have eyelashes? In the process of peering through them he also noticed the sky, the beautiful flash of peach-coloured sunset on the English countryside and the parting of the rainclouds that poured down on him earlier and thought about it all – his freedom, its price, and his God in the Rain. This was a benevolent God, and he'd just been usurped in a glorious, celestial revolution that was lighting up the sky.

He felt a loss, inside, to see the God go, especially after all that had just occurred… the third memory of that time was the wonder and sadness at feeling tears catch in his eyelashes, blurring the reds and oranges of the sunset.

For a long time after she'd walked Eric Finch out of the Gallery, Evey sat in the near darkness and studied V. The door was cracked open – partially out of curiosity on Evey's part, and out of deference for the man lying on the bed, fitfully sleeping. She'd seen his face already, once, at St. Catherine's, and the memory stuck with her. Evey would never tell V this, of course, but in the dimness of the room she fancied she could still make out the curve of his jaw, the shiny scars of his cheeks and forehead, and the shadow of his eyelashes.

The thought of V's face – the man behind the mask, as it was – forced her stomach to twist into knots. It was like peeking into a secret diary, or divulging a secret, a broken pact between them, one of their last remaining barriers shattered down in a rush of IV needles and harried doctors. Eric – Finch – had seen it too, of course, though he was a cop, and they were as a rule better at hiding their surprise at the world around them. Finch had left without mentioning the gross invasion of privacy, which she was grateful for; she felt guilty enough as it was, and didn't want or need him adding to it.

Nevertheless, she could still picture his eyes, wide and frightened at the trauma she had just put him through. V, _frightened_ – it was a thought she couldn't even fathom, and she'd even seen it. Twice now, as a matter of fact, except the latter time she'd seen it without the face of Guy Fawkes overshadowing.

If the thought scared her, she couldn't even imagine what it would do to V. She trembled in the darkness of the room, and tried to turn her thoughts onto sunnier paths.

V had hazel eyes. Hazel eyes with lashes, because he'd thrown his arms up protectively at the explosion and saw the world through unmarred eyes, she mused, before catching and mentally chastising herself. At least, that's what she supposed as they rushed him into surgery to remove the bullets. Why she was thinking of his eyes of all things, she couldn't fathom – she should have instead been worrying about his wounds or even his very survival, but a pair of green and brown irises plagued her thoughts, and she craved to see them uncovered again.

The quirk of fate that were V's eyelashes bugged her, continuing to plague her thoughts until she walked away from the room in frustration to get a glass of water. She felt guilty about leaving him alone; Evey supposed that it was the inevitable buildup of nervous energy, and walking was better than fidgeting, at any rate. After a few minutes she settled down again, and tried to focus her thoughts on the man in front of her and his condition: fussing with his IVs, refilling the saline, and checking the dressings on his bullet wounds.

The saline was running out quickly, she noticed. She'd have to do something about that soon.

The bullets, interestingly, had played less of a role in V's dramatic fall than Evey and Finch originally guessed. They were hollow-points, a nasty sort of bullet with a small hole in the tip that expanded as the bullet rotated – a favorite of Creedy's men – but they had impacted with something hard on his torso and the worst of the volley was spared. They had never found that object, but on V's chest were a number of flesh wounds, nasty blue and red bruises, stark against the white of his skin. It was all rather patriotic, actually. The major damage was to his shoulders, arms, and legs – where the spray of bullets actually hit and left gaping exit wounds. Those made for quite the bloody, if not life-threatening, surgery and it would take a long while for those to heal up. But he _would_ heal, and that was what mattered.

Except that he may never be able to throw his knives with the same precision, she thought suddenly, looking down at him. Or play the piano with the same amount of skill, or – and the thought was exhilarating – dip her when they waltzed to the Wurlitzer in the ways that he did. V would recover and he would be furious with her, she knew, when he woke up. Furious for not putting him on the train, for taking him to St. Catherine's, for letting the world (or at least half a dozen doctors, her, and Finch) see his scarred torso, arms, and legs.

God forbid he ever find out about his mask. That was something she doubted she could ever tell him.

"Fie!" V muttered, and the sound of it nearly made Evey jump out of her own skin. She watched him intently for a moment more, watched him as he grunted in his sleep and sounded out a few, unintelligible words. It reminded Evey that she hadn't slept in almost three days, but she wasn't tired. As a matter of fact she was tensed, ready and waiting for something to happen. As she set the water down next to him, she was taken with the sudden urge to get back up walk around some more. To the center of the gallery, to the vanity, to go outside – wherever.

_If I had any sense_, she thought grimly, staring at the prone man's form, _I'd walk out of here entirely. Just… leave him to get up, which he __**will**__ do, and never come back. _She thought for a moment more, then decided that the main hall was far enough.

When she was a girl, Evey had a problem with pacing. It made the other girls nervous, she was told, but it was a hard habit to break. The feel of a rhythmic gait, the click of heels on a stony floor – there was comfort in its repetition, and so she ignored the supervisors at the group home she had stayed in and kept it up anyway.

Evey paced the hallway that night, from V's room to the other end, to the vanity over to the kitchen. She ignored the stacks of books and papers piling high with dust – to her, this was rest, only the active type. She didn't dare sleep, but thought instead of her responsibilities: keeping V alive, getting more saline, cashing in her food vouchers (if they were even good anymore), mending her costumes, laundry.

_What have I become_? a stray thought passing through her mind asked her, while coming up a shopping list. _Nursemaid to a psychopath, becoming a psychopath... _Evey blinked, still pacing.

_When did introspection become so annoying? _she asked herself nastily in return, pacing in front of a mirror. The reflection caught her eye, and she paused. She was wearing V's costume, and her face – which was pale and sleep-deprived and twisted into a frown – glared back at her, the angry counterpart to V's smirking leer. Evey drew a breath, surprised her own sight, and reached out tentatively to touch the mirror when from V's room when a voice – _his_ voice – spoke from the other room.

The spell was broken. Evey fled.

At first, it was a flutter behind his eyelids, almost an itch that caused him to blink a few times and finally open his eyes. The rose smell still hung strong, but the music had stopped playing and the sliver of brightness at his door was now gone, bathing him in a warm, living, breathing darkness.

"Wha –" he croaked, before there was a commotion in the next room and something filled his room with light, putting a cool glass up to his lips and tipping water into his mouth. It was the most refreshing thing he'd ever had, better than any vintage or soft drink or shot of liquor. He swallowed, feeling the water slide down his throat and pass down into his stomach, then took another greedy sip.

"How do you feel?" a woman asked him. Evey, he knew, even though he couldn't see her.

"I – how…" he paused, at a temporary loss of words. There was a gap, somewhere, between the train station and the radio show and now.

"May I have some more water?" he croaked instead and Evey chuckled, then tipped the cup once again.


End file.
